Gorham Dummer Abbott

Gorham Dummer Abbott (September 3, 1807 – August 3, 1874) was an American clergyman, educator, and author. He was one of the earliest pioneers in the work of higher education for women in this country. Early life and education He was born in Hallowell, Maine, to Jacob and Betsey Abbott. In 1826, he graduated from Bowdoin College, and later attended Andover Theological Seminary were also graduated in 1831. Starting in 1831, together with his brother Jacob Abbott, conducted the Mount Vernon School for Girls in Boston, Massachusetts. He left the school in 1833, and married Rebecca S. Leach on February 11, 1834. Career He was ordained a minister in the Presbyterian Church in 1837, and served as the pastor of the Presbyterian Church of New Rochelle, New York from 1837 through 1841. Beginning in 1841, he served with the literary department of the American Tract Society, a position he kept until 1843, when he went to New York City to found a new girls' school with his brothers: the Abbott Collegiate Institute for Young Ladies. In 1846, when one of his brothers decided to leave, Abbott took 40 of the students from this school and established the Spingler Institute for Girls. In an era that ordinarily heralded the cult of domesticity, in which a woman’s sphere was within the home (the four qualities that a “true” or “good” woman embodied were purity, piety, submissiveness, and domesticity), the Spingler Institute was a contradiction: the Institute’s catalogue stated its aim was “to provide for daughters, privileges of education equal to those of sons in our Universities, Colleges, and Halls.” At the school’s dedication ceremony, Abbott proclaimed, “We have between one and two hundred colleges in our country, but where is the Yale, or Harvard, or Princeton for the education of females?”. Abbott’s purpose, according to The American Journal of Education, was “the hope of calling attention to a higher order of education for daughters in our country, and of elevating its general character.” Abbott’s progressive school also housed a large playground for girls and provided athletic equipment, which was unusual for the era. The students also were self-governed, and no punishments were meted out.